Oak Ridge native Carol Varnadore Aebersold took her family tradition and turned it into a multi-million-dollar business — all because she “took that chance and said ‘yes.’”

The co-author of the popular “Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition” book spoke to more than 300 area residents at Oak Ridge High School this week.

She was the keynote speaker at the annual literacy luncheon sponsored by Altrusa International of Oak Ridge and the Breakfast Rotary Club of Oak Ridge.

Proceeds from the luncheon provide money for area literacy programs.

Aebersold told how at age 50-something she was feeling despondent. The former teacher was now an empty nester and her husband’s business had suffered from an embezzler.

“I was like, ‘I’m already finished,’” Aebersold recalled.

But one of her twin daughters, Chanda Bell, was surprised by her mother’s emotion.

Chanda told her mother she should write a book because she was such a good writer.

Sitting on a shelf in Aebersold’s kitchen, Chanda saw the elf who’d been her mother’s friend throughout childhood. It was the elf Aebersold brought with her into her adult life and shared with her children … along with the story of the elf who showed up each Christmas and told Santa whether she’d been naughty or nice.

“Mom we should write about our elf tradition and share it with the world,” Chanda reportedly told her mother. With naysayer feelings, Aebersold said something within her kept telling her to “Say yes, say yes.”

And she did.

She wrote the rhyming book with Chanda. They sent it to 10 literary agencies and they began getting rejection letters.

But one New York agent contacted them, telling them she didn’t usually open her own mail but she did open theirs.

“Something called me to yours,” the agent told them.

After reading it, the agent told them that “I knew in my gut” that there was something special about this. She asked the two to send the elf to New York to be used in pitching the book, and although the elf had never left their family or traveled, “We prayed over it and sent Fisbee to New York,” Aebersold said.

But success didn’t just happen. The agent advised them to self-publish the book.

“We had no money,” Aebersold said. But they chose to try, getting advice from the Small Business Development Center in their area.

Chanda’s twin, Christa Pitts, quit her job as a host on the television shopping network QVC, Chanda maxed out her credit cards, and they turned Carol’s husband’s home office into a business center.

Page 2 of 3 - They printed the first batch of books — a minimum of 5,000 was required for printing.

“We invited everyone we had ever known since first grade to a book launch,” Aebersold said. “They came and liked it (the book.)”

They sold the book at a Junior League event, although the League had originally turned them down.

“But they were standing six-deep to buy the book,” Aebersold recalls.

The family went all around the country selling the book and trying to get small stores to carry it.

At the end of the first year, they had sold all 5,000 books. Then, during the second year, eight stores took the chance.

Their turning point came in 2007, when paparazzi snapped a photo of actress Jennifer Garner carrying it.

“(Then) it really spread by word of mouth,” Aebersold said.

QVC and Oprah turned down the book, she said, which was a blessing in disguise because they didn’t have the ability at that time to cope with those kinds of sales. They were still taking orders from her husband’s home office, which was equipped with one computer and one phone.

“We went from that to six employees and we thought we were really hot stuff,” Aebersold said. Now they have 50 employees and plan to add a dozen more this year.

Of their business, Fortune magazine wrote in December: “Since its launch in 2005, the Christmas tradition snowballed from poem to multi-million dollar franchise: Year-over-year growth has averaged 149 percent, sales hit $16.6 million in 2011, CBS premiered ‘The Elf on the Shelf: An Elf's Story’ last December, and a helium-filled ‘Elf on the Shelf’ floated through Herald Square during Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in November.”

“We want to create family moments,” said Aebersold, and that doesn’t mean a lot of time is needed — just a little thought.

When they make their business decisions they concentrate on F.I.R.E. – Family focused, Integrity, Respect and Excellence.

“We work very hard to make sure Santa’s elves get adopted by good families and that everyone who wants one gets one,” Aebersold said.

She recalled a Christmas in which she went to a daughter’s church for a service. She was feeling “woe is me” because she had been so busy and hadn’t even had time to decorate a tree at her own house.

But the former music teacher learned of a second-grade girl who had a condition that left her unable to talk because of past trauma. She was told the little girl had got up and read the “Elf on the Shelf” for show-and-tell to her classmates who had never heard her speak.